Zeid is one of the pioneering artists of Turkish modernism in the 1940’s and of the post-war France avant-garde. Daughter of Kabaağaçlı Şakir Pasha, niece of Grand Vizier Cevat Pasha, and sister of painter Aliye Berger and writer Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, a.k.a Halikarnas Balıkçısı, Fahrünissa Zeid took her surname from Emir Zeid, the brother of Iraqi King Faysal I; she changed the spelling of her name to Fahrelnissa in France. She is the first woman artist exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. She joined the “d Grup” in 1942 in Istanbul, a time she already started to create her unique, extraordinary path. She focused on abstract painting; she became celebrated for her monumental and dynamic abstract compositions that engulf the viewer in fields of color, light, and energetic movement, intertwining cosmic and inner universes. Later in her life, she painted portraits of her family and friends. In 1975 she moved to Amman and founded Fahrelnissa Zeid Institute of Fine Arts in that city.
